The last Quizzler puzzle we're going to unravel is how do you create thisovershooting animation with the minimal number of keyframes, and it's reallyquite a useful trick.Now the obvious way to solve this problem is to use three keyframes: have astarting keyframe here for both Scale and Rotation, come out to the end of myovershoot, put another keyframe there for this Rotation and this Scale, and thenadd a third keyframe here at my rest position.

However, you can do this in two keyframes instead of three.I'll open up Comp Quiz - Overshoot Comp. I saved this with the Graph Editor openand you see what I've created are two keyframe paths where the handle actuallyis pulled upward to create an overshooting animation.A typical Ease In animation comes in flat and horizontal along this line.I'll press the Shift key to constrain that.Now I'll do the same for Rotation here.This is your classic ease in to your final position animation and I'll RAM Preview.

But if you want to overshoot that final position, you can pull the handle abovethe horizontal line.This will cause the graph to now actually go above the at-rest position thencome back down into at-rest.I'll do the same with Rotation here, preview, and now you'll see our overshootand snap back animation.You can do a lot of fun things with the shapes of these curves inside of the Graph Editor.I could go to the other extreme. If I pull this handles below the line, maybeeven something like this,instead of easing into my final pose, instead I will rush up to my final poss.

I'll preview and you see how it slams into that position.So it's another fun animation which is easy to create in the Graph Editor, butwhat you can't really do if you're not in here. You need control of thesehandles to create unusual animations such as this.Let's do one more trick.Now honestly, this little overshoot and slam,it's not my favorite look.It's kind of unsettling to see this snap back and sudden stop in position.It's visually interesting, but maybe not what a real plant would do, as ifthis was a real plant.

So let's try variation on this move.Rather than editing the last keyframe in an unusual way, let's go and makea simple Ease In here on these, instead let's edit the first keyframe in an unusual way.Now the default is a linear keyframe, which means no handles. That's no problem.I'll hold down the Option key on Mac, Alt key on Windows, get my Convert Vertextool and drag myself out of handle.I'm going to do the same thing for my Rotation value.Now that I have handles, I can play around with what they do.

If I want to create an overshoot animation, I need to pull this handle upwardand pull it to some considerable length to create my overshoot.See that's a very similar curve as I had before, but now I've got my incominghandle to my last keyframe to smooth out this final approach.So you can see what's going on here.I'm going to go ahead and hit plus a few times and move a little bit later intime, so you can see what's happening with this final keyframe. There we go.

Overshooting, there is a handle for it, then coming back into position.I'm going to zoom back out again and do the same thing with Rotation.Get its handle, drag it really long so I overshoot my final value then usemy second keyframe's handle, Shift key to make it horizontal, and ease into that final value.Now let's look at this animation.Now the flower still overshoots its mark, but rather than slamming back in itsfinal position, it more softly settles in to the position.

Now I can change how softly it settles by playing around the links of these handles.Now I know the Graph Editor is daunting and it's not necessarily intuitive foran artistic type, but I hope you can see now how useful it is to master it,because you can create these subtle or complex animations with relative ease,where you'd just otherwise be creating loads of keyframes and really tweaking valuesand spending a lot of time trying to get the look you want, when it might be assimple as dragging couple handles in the Graph Editor.

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Author

Updated

11/7/2016

Released

1/26/2011

In this course, Chris Meyer helps beginning After Effects artists take their animations to the next level. Chris shows how to refine animations to create elegant, coordinated movements with the minimum number of keyframes—as well as slam-downs, whip pans, and other attention-getters. Additional movies show how to reverse-engineer existing animations, create variations on a theme, and master other parts of the program. Even though this course is designed for beginners, even veterans should learn tricks that many experienced users are unaware of. Chris' friendly running commentary lets you in on his mental process as he works on an animation. Exercise files for After Effects CS4 through CC are included with the course.

After Effects Apprentice is created by Trish and Chris Meyer and designed to be used on their own and as a companion to their book After Effects Apprentice.

Topics include:

Understanding how keyframes work under the hood

Controlling the anchor point to create more predictable animations

Mastering the Graph Editor for the ultimate control over keyframes

Animating parameters including motion paths

Hand-drawing motion paths to simplify complex movements

Applying and tweaking Motion Blur

Using hold keyframes

Skill Level Beginner

3h 1m

Duration

426,346

Views

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A: There isn't an effect that can create these types of transitions. It's really a matter of animating the type and camera, using basic keyframing and positioning.

If
you understand the basics of moving the anchor point of a type layer,
animating the parameters of that layer (Scale, Rotation, Position,
etc.) and then separately animating the camera around the type layers, you
can achieve different types of transitions. Check out the following videos for more information:

Q: This course was updated on 11/09/2012. What changed?

A: We have updated the movie dealing with Time Display to be applicable to working with different versions of After Effects (from CS4 to CS6). We also added a movie that shows our premium subscribers how to use the exercise files, including the new exercise files designed for After Effects CS6.

Q: This course was updated on 11/07/2016. What changed?

A: We updated five videos to stay up to date with the latest changes in After Effects CC.